Read “Survival as Resistance” to students as they follow along in the
student booklet

Discuss the questions that follow the reading

NOTE TO TEACHER: The point of this exercise is to make students aware
of the specific historical conditions that made Jewish armed resistance implausible.
By the end of the exercise, students should begin to see that the question,
“Why didn’t the Jews resist?” is not meaningful.

Reading 15A

JEWISH ARMED RESISTANCE

PART I: THE QUESTION OF ARMED RESISTANCE

For Poland, the war is over. Germany has won. Polish cities are occupied.
The Jewish and non-Jewish populations are subjected to laws imposed by the
conquering Germans. People are still with their families - parents, grandparents,
sisters and brothers. It is against the law to own any weapons, and guns
are scarce. Recognizing all of these factors, consider carefully the following
question.

Should the Jews have retaliated with violence at this point?

Suggestion for discussion: To react violently at this point seems
foolish. The situation is considered temporary and livable, like other wars,
other invasions and other anti-Semitic laws. While Jews are being humiliated
in the streets, this is not a new situation and the non-Jewish population
is also under stress. Both the Jewish and non-Jewish populations are against
any violent uprising as they attempt to regain some normalcy.

A Jewish ghetto is ordered to be formed. Jewish families are moved into
apartments with other families. The average apartment now has 7.5 people
per room.

Should the Jews have retaliated with violence at this point?

Suggestion for discussion: To react violently is still considered
an extremist act. Against whom would they rebel? Whom would they shoot? For
what purpose? To jeopardize their families? Everyone assumed that since the
war was over in Poland, violence would decrease. No one expected that
the Germans would increase their hostilities against the Jews of Poland
after they had already conquered the nation.

Food is rationed and forced labor begins. Anyone refusing work will be
imprisoned along with his family in a concentration camp.

Should the Jews have retaliated with violence at this point?

Suggestion for discussion: To react violently meant endangering loved
ones and opposing an overpowering armed force. The labor is hard, the food
is scarce, but this is still considered a temporary crisis.

Within two weeks, starvation reduces the ranks of the Jewish population.
Typhus is rampant along with dysentery. Sanitation facilities and running
water are minimal. Lice, disease, hunger all produce hysterical, weakened
and sick people. Within one month, most people have lost 30 to 40 pounds.

Should the Jews have retaliated with violence at this point?

Suggestion for discussion: To react violently is now nearly impossible.
Movement itself is painful and the primary concern is protecting family members.

Suggestion for discussion: To react violently is not only a physical
burden, but suicidal.

Rumors continue to be heard that those who are deported have been resettled
and are working. Post cards and letters have come back saying that life
is hard but tolerable (no one in the ghetto knew that their relatives had
been forced to write these postcards). On the one hand, there is fear for
one’s family members; on the other hand, there is hope for survival. No
one expects a policy of annihilation.

Should the Jews have retaliated with violence at this point?

Suggestion for discussion: To react violently is to risk life and
defeat hope. There are few unclear rumors about mass graves and death camps,
but they are unconfirmed and seem too insane to be true. Since the illusion
of hope is more appealing, the act of retaliation becomes less realistic.

A train transport. Eighty people are jammed in a boxcar for three days
without food or water. There are no sanitary facilities and barely enough
air to breathe. This happens after prolonged starvation, slave labor, sickness,
beatings, fear. People are totally demoralized.

The doors open - Auschwitz. Dogs, guns, yelling, crying, screams, smoke,
the stench of burning flesh, family members slip away - a nightmare.

Should the Jews have retaliated with violence at this point?

Suggestion for discussion: To react violently is no longer an issue.

Do you think asking: “Why didn’t the Jews resist?” is an appropriate question
in light of what you now know of the conditions during the Holocaust?

Suggestions for discussion: The question of resistance, meaning armed
resistance, no longer seems proper. In fact, some historians have called that
question not only offensive but absurd. Living conditions in the ghetto must
be stressed. After fewer than two weeks of starvation rations, with disease
rampant and guns and weapons almost impossible to come by, the question of
armed resistance is a foolish one.

Also, family bonding worked against Jewish resistance. The Gestapo
technique of holding the group responsible for individual actions stopped
armed resistance. Whole communities were destroyed because of acts of armed
resistance. One example is the Czech town of Lidice {lid-i-say}. After
the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, the Germans randomly chose
the town of Lidice to be punished for this act. The men of Lidice were killed
along with the children. The women were sent to concentration and labor camps.
Such acts of brutality effectively stopped most armed resistance.

PART II: THE REALITY OF ARMED RESISTANCE

Given the conditions described in this lesson, the following examples seem
nothing less than miraculous. (See map for each example.) Keep in
mind the conditions that prisoners endured in the death camps, the near-total
dehumanization and starvation described by survivors in the videotape and
presented in other parts of this curriculum.

Ghettos:

Tuchin {too-chin} ghetto: On September 3, 1942, the Jewish community
burned its homes and fled to the woods. Local Ukrainian populations hunted
down all but 15 survivors of the 700 Jewish families and delivered them
to the Germans.

Warsaw ghetto: On April 19, 1943, German troops surrounded the ghetto
in order to begin the final deportations. Over 310,000 Jews had already
been deported since June 1942. Almost all had been sent directly to the
gas chambers at Treblinka. The Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), led
by 23-year-old Mordechai Anielewicz {ann-nee-lev-ich}, consisted of about
1,500 young men and women. These young resistance fighters had lived in
the ghetto for over two years and were nearly starved, suffering from
disease and the sadness of having lost families and friends. In addition
to these terrible conditions, they had managed to get only three light
machine guns, about 100 rifles, a few dozen pistols, some hand grenades
and explosives. When the resistors opened fire, the surprised German troops
fled from the ghetto. The Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion had begun. It would
last about one month, although the last documented skirmish in the Warsaw
ghetto occurred in October, 1943, six months after the start of the rebellion.

The ZOB faced 3,000 German troops who were equipped with armored trucks,
artillery, flame throwers, heavy machine guns and heavy explosives. The
ZOB resisted until May 16, when the Great Synagogue was blown up and the
ghetto, already in flames, was burned to the ground. Along with a few Polish
non-Jews who had helped in the battle, 56,065 Jews surrendered. The prisoners
were either shot, sent to the Treblinka or Maidanek death camps or to labor
camps where almost all died. Sixteen Germans had been killed. The Warsaw
Ghetto Rebellion against the Germans was an utter failure from a military
point of view. But word of it spread across Europe as a symbolic sign of
hope for all those resisting the Nazis.

Bialystok {bee-al-eh-shtok} ghetto: On August 16, 1943, realizing
the Nazis were going to destroy Bialystok, the ZOB attacked the Nazi forces.
The battle lasted one day on the outskirts of the city. The resistors
ran out of ammunition and were captured or killed. One group of young
women carried on the struggle from within the ghetto and were eventually
killed. Several other people escaped and joined partisans in the nearby
forests.

Vilna ghetto: On September 1, 1943, largely because of increasing activity
around the city, the Nazis moved to liquidate, that is, destroy, the ghetto.
The United Partisan Organization (FPO), active for months, attempted an
uprising within the ghetto. Poorly armed, they were hunted down and killed.
Some escaped to the forests where they joined partisans until the liberation
of Lithuania in July 1944.

Death Camps:

Treblinka: On August 2, 1943, after the camp had existed for one year,
the 600 remaining Jews (800,000 had died there) blew it up and escaped
to the nearby woods. Forty survived.

Sobibor: On October 14, 1943, armed with hatchets, Jewish prisoners and
some Russian prisoners of war killed about a dozen Nazi officers. Four
hundred prisoners, almost all who remained in the camp, rushed to the
woods. Half died in a minefield surrounding the camp, and more were killed
by Nazi and Polish Nazi groups. About sixty survived and joined Soviet
partisans. Two days later, Himmler ordered Sobibor dismantled. The camp
had been the site of the murder of over 250,000 Jews.

Auschwitz: On October 7, 1944, one of the Sonderkommando units,
the special group of prisoners used to clear the gas chambers of bodies,
blew up one of the crematoria and attempted an armed escape. The members
of this Sonderkommando were all killed.

Reading 15B

SURVIVAL AS RESISTANCE

Under unique circumstances like those of the Holocaust, “resistance” has
to be refined. Armed resistance was almost impossible - yet, it did occur. But
another type of resistance became a way of life for Jews: to defeat death,
from moment to moment and hour to hour. Even if survival was a result of what
some survivors say way “pure luck,” it represented resistance. Each day of
survival meant successfully resisting the Nazi plan of genocide. To survive,
to live, meant resistance.

As was apparent from “A ‘Normal’ Day in Auschwitz,” the prisoners lost the
freedom to make choices. To make choices was to act like a human being. One
scholar has noted that committing suicide was one of the first signs of resistance
by prisoners. They chose to die when they could make no choices about anything
else. Some chose to attempt escape, although few succeeded. Survivors described
small acts of “sabotage.” Some at Auschwitz tore clothing apart as they sorted
through clothes in the Brezhinka. Others reported pouring sand into
machinery they were forced to build in slave labor camps.

One prisoner of Auschwitz washed his hands in extremely filthy water each
day. When another prisoner asked him why he bothered to “wash” in such water,
he replied: “To prove to myself that I am still a human being.” As he stood
on the Appelplatz on his first full day in Auschwitz, a fourteen-year-old
boy, alone after being separated from his family the day before, met an old
man standing next to him. “What portion of the Bible were you studying at
home?” the old man asked him. The boy told him. “We will begin reciting at
that place today and go further each day,” the old man whispered. “Why?” asked
the boy. “To continue.” Simple, routine or ritual acts became choices that
allowed people to maintain links with their former lives.

Praying, one of the most serious “crimes” in any of the concentration, labor
or death camps, was an act of resistance. Several survivors recall conducting
secret religious services in the barracks. They risked their lives with this
action but maintained their identity as Jews. This, to them, was resistance.
One survivor of a labor camp recalled that on the Jewish Day of Atonement,
Yom Kippur, she and many other prisoners chose to observe the religious
tradition of fasting. When the SS guards discovered that these Jews were not
eating, they forced them to do hours of punishing exercise. Then, those prisoners
were not given rations for two days.

Those who survived have spoken of these acts as resistance – defeating the
Nazi insistence that they become less than human.

The Nazis forced their victims to give up part of what it meant to be human:
the freedom of choice. They tried to rob Jews of their human status.

Questions

What does “resistance” mean and why is it noble?

Suggestions for discussion: Resistance means opposition or refusal
to comply with the demands of authority or evil law. The standard idea of
resistance to tyranny or oppression is physical or armed resistance. The
point of his exercise was to demonstrate that, during the Holocaust, physical
resistance was nearly impossible and almost certain to fail.

The key to resistance against such overwhelming circumstances is the concept
of choice – keeping a human identity by keeping control of some acts. Even
when the fate of the victims was out of their hands, the ability to make
choices, no matter how insignificant, remained an extremely important act.
The Nazis tried to remove all possibility of choice prisoners could not
choose when they would go to the bathroom, when they would eat, when they
would sleep, talk, stand, wash, work or even think. To silently assert some
choice meant to resist; it affirmed one’s status as a free human being with
some dignity. Such resistance was not the same as automatic rejection of
authority.

What are some examples of the different types of Jewish resistance during
the Holocaust?

Suggestions for discussion: There are numerous examples given here
of armed resistance, the type that most people think of when they hear the
word “resistance.” The examples of survival as resistance include: small
acts of sabotage; practicing routine habits like washing; trying to continue
ritual observances by praying or fasting on Yom Kippur; choosing
to behave in certain ways. The key to the idea of survival as resistance
is the exercising of some choice in one’s life.

How is “survival as resistance” different from automatic antagonism
toward authority:

Suggestions for Discussion: The differences are important.

Survival as resistance affirms the self even while submitting to
force

Only each prisoner knew he or she was resisting because a more public
display would have meant death

Antagonism to authority automatically rejects all authority

Antagonism to authority resists openly and with contempt

Why do people resist?

Suggestions for discussion: In the cases described above, the victims
resisted because they tried to hold on to their identity as Jews or as civilized
human beings. People might resists, as they did in the Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion
or the other armed resistance attempts, because all hope was gone. People
resist authority or oppression for moral reasons, self-defense or self-affirmation.